


do you recognise a nervous twitch (that exposes the weakness of the myth)

by cartoonheart



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonheart/pseuds/cartoonheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Putting two and two together, it could only ever have been him anyway: tidying up after her, trying to organise her life, making sense of her chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance for any lapses of canon, or glaring historical inaccuracies. 
> 
> Scenes switch between post series 2 to pre-series Spain.
> 
> Title from Crowded House's 'Instinct'.

Lix doesn't know when it started, or even why. She wasn't prone to paying attention to such trivial details (far more important matters to focus on, darling), but she had felt that, for a time, something had been going on under her nose that she was missing.

A stack of books here. Carefully ordered papers there. A pile of photographs arranged neatly. Thumbtacks. Little things. Small enough for her to question her sanity (did I put that there? Is that how I left those?) but inconsequential enough for her to quickly forget about in the big scheme of things.

But now, with Freddie back on his feet and Bel slowly pulling herself together again, Lix finds she has the time to wonder. Besides, she's _sure_ her typewriter has been moved to the left ever so slightly.

It is completely by accident that she catches him. Putting two and two together, it could only ever have been him anyway: tidying up after her, trying to organise her life, making sense of her chaos. Part of her feels that she should be indignant about it, should tell him off for prowling through her office on the rare occasion that she wasn't in it (when did he find the time?). In the end, she withdraws, says nothing. If, perhaps, she leaves things even more muddled than before, well, who would begrudge her that if it makes him happy?

He always had the ability to appear out of nowhere - silent on his feet, despite his stature. He used to hover in doorways: hers, the newsroom, Bel's office. It reminds her of Spain - the way his tall frame always looked hunched in the lower than usual stone archways. It is funny the things she still remembers.

\--

Lix is content to leave him to his own devices. Besides, things between them have been strained recently. Although strained is putting it rather nicely, she thinks. They haven't talked about Sophia again. In fact, they have barely spoken at all, barely been in the same room alone again since.

Not that she'd wanted to be - _no_ , that's not true. She _had_ wanted to talk about it with him, but there was never a right time, or the right words, and now it has been far too long to bring it up again. The months have marched on and the show still has to be made, and so Lix has buried herself in the foreign news desk, and he doesn't appear, silent as a ghost, at her shoulder anymore.

And yet, he was still here, still Head of News. She'd half expected him to swan off back to Paris, to his black coffee and proper croissants, so as to possibly avoid ever having to look her in the eye again. He'd got the answer he had come to London - to her - to find. There was nothing holding him here anymore. But he has stayed, day after day, through Freddie's recovery and Hector's almost defection to ITV. Through everything.

Lix had considered that perhaps now that they both had the heartbreaking truth, there was nothing more to be said between them. Randall had got what he came for and everything else that they had shared was just too dangerous to leave out in the open any more. One grasp of a hand in a weak moment doesn't erase decades of suffering and guilt, or whatever bittersweet memories he had decided to cling to about her. Perhaps she had just read too much into it all.

And yet, he still arranges the ornaments in her office (tacky knick-knacks she'd collected over the years) so that they are parallel to the window ledge. 

She moves them back again, out of pettiness.

\--

He had been striking in his youth. To Lix, he still was, even with grey hair, paler skin, and lines on his face showing how the time had passed. But despite that, Randall Brown, as she'd first known him, had been quite something indeed.

She hadn't been looking for a distraction. After all, a war zone was enough of a distraction as it was, and she really didn't have time for entanglements. Not to say that she didn't have offers - she was a rare things in those days, a female keeping up with the boys, armed with a camera and a quickfire attitude. The men of the collective news agencies looked out for her, even if she wanted them to or not, and if she was to indulge one or two of them on a lonely evening - well, she was only human, wasn't she?

But from the off, _he_ had ignored her. Randall Brown had been in her building for three weeks before he had even made eye contact with her, and even then he had appraised her frankly, before turning away. She didn't know whether to be flattered or offended, so she had settled on neither, but had made herself determined to find out more about him.

Back then he had been all limbs, gangly and less controlled, a distance cry from the self-contained frozen man he had now become. He had compellingly perceptive eyes, a lovely shade of green behind thick framed glasses. Nowadays, he had more a sense of undisguised wariness about him. In recent months, Lix has often asked herself whether she had been the cause of that (although in other moments she thinks that perhaps she was giving herself far too much credit to assume such a thing). 

On the whole, although she watched him, a little disturbed at her own lack of restraint, they barely spoke outside of the occasional morning greeting in the corridor of their shared building (he with a third floor room, her on the second). Lix had been surprised to discover his softly spoken brogue. Its low rumble had caused a flutter inside of her that she instantly hated herself for. 

\--  
She'd caught him on film once, inadvertently, shooting photographs of a crowd in Madrid - angry young men shouting and women and children cowering in doorways. She hadn't realised at the time, not until she'd developed it, hot and sticky in a make-shift communal dark room, dying for a cigarette.

She'd caught him in part profile in an attempt at a picture of a mother and daughter holding each other on the outskirts of the mob, faces in despair. But she hadn't centered it well enough, and there had been too much jostling in the crowd. But really, on days like that, Lix's style was more to point and click and get out as fast as she could. There would be outrage in the air, but no real change in the story. Just filler, as she had come to think of it, anger that achieves nothing. Lix wonders when she'd become so callous about human lives. 

So somehow she'd captured him instead, his mouth slightly ajar as if he'd just shouted something. His camera was clasped in front of him, long tapered fingers graceful, a frown between his eyes. His nose looked slightly too long at that angle: it made it look out of proportion with his face even though in the flesh it suited him perfectly. 

She kept the picture. She wasn't sure why.

\--

Lix knows that that picture still exists somewhere in her Lime Grove office . She idly wonders if Randall will ever find it, hidden in a drawer, during one of his tidying spells. At the time she'd never shown it to him, had barely seen it herself in years. Nowadays it was just filed away with the other things that hurt too much, the knowledge of its existence being enough for her.

She wants to talk to him, wants to barrel into office and force him to look at her for more than half a second. But what would she say? She doesn't even know what she wants any more, now that Freddie is better and things are getting back to normal. Things were going fine before Randall, but now he's come back and unsettled everything in her life. She knows that he's distracting her, weighing on her mind.

The whole situation is frustrating, but she's not sure what to do or what she wants. Why is he still here? Why won't he look at her? Why won't he just go back to bloody Paris so she can get on with her life, in whatever way that might be? Can she even do that now?

\--

Lix would like to say that her younger self resisted her attraction to him for as long as possible, but if anything, that was a ridiculous lie. All it really took was a hard day, some whisky and the press of his hand on the small of her back one evening and she could no longer pretend that her initial curiosity hadn't grown into something more.

At first, she'd seen him as a challenge - or at least, that was her original justification. The days were long and difficult and sometimes she needed comfort just as much as the next person. But unlike the hardened edges of the other men, there was something softer about Randall. Not externally, of course. There was always something slightly rigid in his posture when he entered a room, and his irritating way for liking things just so, but underneath his stern watchfulness, she sensed something kind and perhaps even vulnerable. He was so unlike herself in every way, and perhaps that is what caused her fascination to grow. 

Besides, she was unused to this sort of attraction. Lix had never had a problem gaining the attention of men - but it had always been a game to her, a flirtation, and never something she took particularly seriously. Until now.

But she wouldn't admit to it being more than that. Not yet.

\--

Her phone is ringing, ringing, ringing, but after the day she has just had, the idea of answering it repulses her. She's tired and fraught and out of whisky, so instead she curls up in her armchair to rest her eyes. The sun touches her through the smeared window, relaxing her. The phone stops ringing. She falls asleep.

She wakes up suddenly some time later. Lix knows this because the sun has moved and fallen in the sky. A scratchy wool blanket has been placed on top of her, and Randall is fussing around her shelves quietly. His back is facing her, fingers fluttering over the spines of her books, occasionally re-ordering one - by height, it seems - before standing back to examine his handiwork with a nod of approval.

Lix watches him for long minutes under lowered eyelashes. His presence is therapeutic in a way, like the sound of a calm ocean or rain against a window. He moves silently, like a spirit, the only give-away being the dull thud of a book hitting the shelf, or a soft huff of his breath. 

She should say something to alert him, but something makes her feel guilty about catching him like this, even though he is in her office, moving her things. It's stupid, but she'd told him once before to just do what he needed to do, and she isn't inclined to retract that statement now. She closes her eyes again and listens instead. After another five minutes she hears him quietly shuffle out, not before pausing in the doorway for a long moment.

Talk to me, Randall, she thinks. For god's sake, just talk to me.

\--

In the end, after a long dust-covered day in the Spanish heat, she kisses him on the threshold of her dingy room, and invites him in. She is shocked when he says no. Lix hovers on the verge of being offended before she notices how Randall's hands are shaking as he adjusts his glasses, his odd way of tapping the side of the frames twice on the right side with his index figure as he does so. A nervous habit perhaps, but it causes something in her to soften.

Instead she kisses him again - just once, more chastely than before - and wishes him a good evening. He looks simultaneously distressed and relieved and it makes her laugh to herself as she closes the door on him.

\--

It happens eventually, but it was always going to. The clubs in Madrid are noise and smoke and bright colours, and Lix dances well - she knows that. She doesn't quite have the skill or finesse of the locals but she is a quick learner, and she revels in the admiring looks she gets.

Sometimes the nights are long, and never quiet and the only thing they can do, all those journalists in their cramped and run-down dormitory-like building, is drink and dance. The clubs welcome them, because they have money to spend and are looking for a good time.

Lix dances with everyone: the overweight but energetic British war correspondent, the Australian photographer and his numerous colleagues, a waitress named Carla, even by herself. She dances and dances until she might make herself sick and she drinks and drinks like she trying to forget everything she has ever seen.

Randall hasn't spoken to her since the other evening, and she's not really sure where they left things. She wants to touch him, smooth down his hair, understand his tapered hands, feel his warmth. He's currently pressed against the wall with a few journalists from the Paris bureau in a discussion that looks lively, cradling his whisky with ice. She's come to learn that he holds his liquor well. He's not wearing his glasses, although she can see they are tucked carefully away in the upper pocket of his light jacket. His face looks different without them, more angular, younger. He looks up at her. 

She smiles. He smiles back. She beckons him over, with a twist of her hips. After several long moments, he finally approaches.

"Dance with me," she says, her feet already moving to the rhythm of the band.

He looks mortified at the thought of dancing in public, but he's also been drinking all evening and she likes to think that she is something if not a little tempting and hard to refuse.

He flounders for an excuse, but there isn't one really so he drains the rest of his drink and puts the empty glass on the nearest table. It takes him a few attempts to position it in a way that satisfies him. Lix has noticed these eccentricities before, but she finds them strangely quaint, rather than irritating. She grabs his hands, and he doesn't resist. They are cold and damp from the condensation of the glass. 

She soon realises that he really is a terrible dancer; no sense of timing and two left feet despite his valiant attempts. Lix doesn't care, she dances anyway. He relaxes eventually. It isn't that bad in the end.

The music changes to a slower number, and instead of him making an escape as she thought he might, Randall steps in and pulls her close. Lix feels a physical ache inside of her at the motion, a jolt of electricity or lust or both. Her lack of control embarrasses her: her sheer desire for this man for reasons that she still cannot entirely fathom. 

And because he is so hard to read, such a closed book, she feels exposed in comparison. Randall somehow has a way of looking at her that makes her feel like he can see all of her secrets, read everything that she is thinking, sense everything she is feeling. Lix resents the disadvantage it puts her at, even if it is entirely in her own head. It makes her feel uncertain about everything, and she cannot bear it. She's not used to being on the back foot, and she doesn't even think that Randall means to do it, but somehow he puts her there anyway.

His thumb draws circles on the skin of her hand, clasped in his. The motion is twice in a clockwise direction, twice in the opposite direction. Then repeated. It is oddly soothing.

As they sway, he softly presses a kiss to her temple. 

\--

Bel is storming around, wild about something or other: Hector, or Freddie being stubborn or a lack of cigarettes, Lix assumes. The click of her heels on the hard floor always gets more ferocious when she's in that mood, the slam of her office door a little more forceful.

Lix knows that is her cue.

She glances at Freddie, swimming in paperwork at his desk, as she marches by. 

"What _did_ you do?" she accuses indulgently. 

He throws his hands up. "Not me this time!"

Bel is huffing and pacing in front of her desk, biting her thumbnail, when Lix lets herself in with the barest of knocks.

"Bel, dear - what is the matter?"

The younger woman glances up, looks relieved, and motions for Lix to shut the door. Freddie raises an eyebrow at Lix through the open blinds.

"How do you - how does...?" Bel starts, hands on hips, looking warrior-like but flustered. "Mr Brown!" she eventually says, throwing her hands up, as if that explains everything.

"Ah," Lix replies, unsure where else to go with this. There is no doubt that Randall enjoys frustrating Bel as much as he enjoys making her better at what she does. Lix hates to say it, but for the most part he is usually right. Even after all this time he still has an uncanny way of reading his staff, of knowing that needs to be said, even if its unpopular.

"Can't you talk to him?"

Lix finds herself immediately getting defensive. "Why me?" Her fingers itch for a cigarette and she wishes she'd just stayed in her office if this is turning into what she thinks it is. She's more than happy to counsel Bel through any other drama, but on this one she feels ill-equipped, and if she's honest, hardly impartial.

Bel flounders at this point, starting to doubt herself. "He... he listens to you, Lix. You know him, you know what he's like. You could change his mind, or... talk to him," Bel sighs. "You know what I mean," she finishes pointedly. Bel is astute enough to have picked up on whatever hints have fallen her way since Mr Brown's arrival, but Lix hasn't revealed the full story, the entire history, not to anyone. She has no intention to start now, whatever the cause.

"Oh my dear," she says instead, her tone crisp and clear so as to not be misunderstood. "I think you're confusing me with someone else."

Bel is silent as Lix leaves.

\--

Even though they've talked about Sophia and Spain and she's held him in her arms as he's fallen apart, there is so much still unsaid about what happened, about everything else that occurred all those years ago.

Lix still wears the ring on a chain around her neck, has ever since she discovered it, will probably do so until the day she dies, she thinks. It is a reminder: both a token of grief and of love and everything that she still can't put into words.

She knows he has seen it. He could hardly not have, a beacon of gold between her open collar. But on that matter, like so many others, he remains stubbornly silent.

\--

They leave the club, just him and her, and walk quickly back through the darkened Madrid streets. It isn't far, only a few blocks, but it is quiet, something rare in these dangerous days. The silence makes her uneasy. It seems to make him uneasy too. He hurries them both along.

She's relieved when they reach their building, the unofficial headquarters of displaced journalists and photographers. There is a rusty old bicycle leaning of the wall outside. It won't be there in the morning.

They navigate the stairwell in silence, him following a step behind, footfalls echoing. The electric lights hum loudly, a crackle in the air. Someone on her floor has a record player, and the sound of some maudlin tune flows out from under a door. 

She senses his hesitation to follow her to her room, but he does it anyway, his inate politeness overruling whatever concerns he still seems to have about her. Whatever it is that makes him hold back, Lix doesn't force it. 

Finding her key, it takes her several attempts to unlock the door. The lock is old and stiff and she might be a little tipsy. She could also admit that his presence next to her is throwing her off, and does her pride really want a repeat of the other night? A sensation of an overwhelming quenching of lust, followed quickly by the swift dampening rejection? Lix knows that she is proud and there are only so many times that her vanity can take it before she knows when to cut her losses. 

The door eventually opens and they stand awkwardly on the threshold, the air heavy with a sense of deja vu. She sees his eyes flicker behind her, just briefly, and Lix feels a sudden defensiveness rise up inside her. She knows she's not really the domestic type, as evidenced by the fact that her undergarments are drying over the back of a chair stacked high with untidy papers and books. Randall doesn't say anything anyway, and only tightens his grip on the doorframe, knuckles white.

Just as Lix has resolved not to kiss him goodnight (she honestly can't keep throwing herself at him and expecting a different outcome) and she's offering up a polite thank you instead, he steps in close, leans in to her. There is a beat, a slight hesitation to him, which makes her hold her breath, freeze in place. His mouth is inches away. She won't make the first move again, she won't, she won't.

Luckily in the end, she doesn't have to. 

\--

His hands are just as beautiful as she had imagined. Randall touches her now without reluctance or reserve, past concerns seemingly forgotten. Lix feels sickeningly grateful, a reaction which would have annoyed her months ago, but now can only accept greedily. 

They barely shut the door, barely turn on the lights. He presses her up against the wall, hands hasty against the buttons of her blouse. She feels hot and sticky and eager to get him undressed, eager to have his hands on her skin, to have him inside of her.

It isn't graceful; she didn't anticipate it would be. The zip of her skirt gets stuck and in his frustration the fabric tears. He looks horrified at himself, at his sheer lack of self control, but she whispers "don't worry darling, don't worry about it", and distracts him by shimmying out of the material and leaving it in a pool on the floor. 

Her tiny bed is barely big enough for the two of them, and his elbow nearly knocks over her bedside lamp before she manages to save it. She laughs, too ecstatic to really care, and kisses him again before he starts over-thinking it as a bad omen. Lix can tell that Randall Brown is the type of man who is prone to over-thinking and she definitely doesn't want him to start now. It doesn't take her long to crawl onto his lap, curl up around him, feel his arms wrap around the bare skin of her back. He looks up at her like he can't believe it, like she's hung the moon, and presses his lips to her neck, her collarbone, her mouth.

"Oh, Lix," he murmurs roughly, "Lix, Lix, Lix". It is hardly original, but he says it like a prayer, like he can't help it, and she finds it rather enchanting in that brogue of his. It is the first time he has ever called her anything other than Miss Storm, and she thinks she could get rather used to it.

He lets her take control, something that other men she had been with found disconcerting or distasteful, but Randall seems to be at her mercy just as much as she is at his, not that she dares let him know it, not yet. She knows this will not be just once, it can't be, she won't let it be. Lix senses that the floodgates have been opened for them both, and won't easily close again.

She takes great pleasure in making him gasp, his tone low and soft and helpless, as she slides down onto him, still curled in his lap. She moves slowly at first, wanting to increase the speed, but still adjusting, still wanting to savour it all. Randall curses under his breath as she twists, reaching to kiss her, his hands pressing the expanse of her back. Hers entwine in his hair, then rest on his shoulders, his upper arms. He is lean but strong, limbs even longer than they first appear hidden by clothing. She finds him desperately attractive and even more so when his fingers graze her nipples, taut and eager, and she cries out and then laughs at how pleased he looks with himself.

She doesn't last long, even through she tries, god she tries, to hold herself back. He hisses as she grinds down in her final moments, urging her on, his mouth pressed to the hollow her arched throat. Their skin is slick with heat and the humidity of her tiny room, the bed creaks with their movement and Lix hopes to God that her neighbours aren't home.

There is barely time for her to catch her breath before he kisses her hard, fiercely, a low hum in his throat. His touch makes her want more, makes her want to go back to the start, experience it all again afresh. Slowly he manoeuvres her onto her back, placing her carefully on her pillow like some sort of precious thing. He kisses her again and again until she can barely stand it anymore, knowing that he is still hard inside her, willing him to move, to push her forward again.

He does eventually, when he has driven her half crazy to the point where she is almost begging, even though Lix Storm never begs, would never degrade herself like that. Randall somehow knows this about her too, she can tell. He knows these things even without her ever having to say them, and so when he slowly, so slowly, fucks her against the mattress, she realises that she's half in love with him already.

\--

Another day, another story. Another late night. Another whisky and another evening curled up in her makeshift bed at the office, the cheap cotton pillow rough on her face. The days go on and on, but from him there is still silence.

The fact of it is that Randall Brown's return into her life has caused her to reflect. Lix is not prone to nostalgia, prefers to leave that relegated to the past. But sometimes, she'll see the way he strides purposefully down the corridor, the way he'll frown behind Hector's back, and she can't help but remember those same gestures, only twenty years earlier.

She recalls that first night, and those many nights after. She wonders if he still a light sleeper, woken by the scarcest noise. He used to read until all hours of the morning, at a rate that would leave her in the dust. Too many times had she rolled over in her sleep to find him still awake, his eyes still quickly scanning the pages of some book or other. 

There are lots of things she wonders, and some she doesn't. Being in such close proximity to him everyday, even when the silence between them was still deafening, has led her to reacquire the knowledge that she thought she had forgotten. Lix found herself collecting it like an animal preparing for winter. He still doesn't drink tea, prefers coffee every time. The spoon is always stirred clockwise, an even number. He still favours the same cologne, something that still haunts Lix when she enters a room, the way she is able to sense that he had been there. 

There are other things that are different, and they besiege her too. She wonders how, when, why: did she forget these things, or has he just changed? There are no answers to those questions that leave her satisfied.

One day, Lix can't bear it any more. She even gets as far as the door of his office, about to knock, before realising that she didn't even know what she was going to say to him: why was she angry? Why was his silence so aggravating to her?

Lix always thought she was braver than this - and perhaps that is why she was so frustrated. A long time had passed since she had locked him, locked Spain, away in a box in her mind and yet here he had arrived demanding it to be re-opened. No sooner had she done so, he had withdrawn again, leaving her lost and unfocused, struggling to make sense of what had happened, what it had meant to them. He had got the answers he had come for. But why then why was he still frequenting the halls of Lime Grove, rearranging her office, rearranging her?

Well, two could play at that game.

\--

She feels guilty sneaking into his office, his inner sanctum - a space he keeps as immaculate as he kept his tiny rundown room in Spain, despite its rather modest trappings. 

But here, as Head of News, his office reflects him: calm, ordered, mysterious. Lix is tempted to start moving things, misaligning his neat lines, but she can't bring herself to do it. It is one thing for him to try and organise her chaos, but she knows that doing the reverse to him would only be an act of cruelty on her part.

There are little things that give him away, give a small glimpse into the man behind the desk, behind the stern brow. He has a plant, which is surprising to her, although if she's honest, he was always the more nurturing one out of the two of them. She remembers the street cats of Madrid being drawn to him during their hasty breakfasts at the corner cafe, something of a running joke between them. They would curl up around his legs, ignoring Lix completely, until he gave them scraps of his breakfast. She would tease him that he must be part feline.

But for now it is late and dark and for once she is eager to get home, run a hot bath and fall asleep stretched out in her own bed. 

She leaves the old photograph of him propped up against his telephone, somewhere where he won't miss it when he arrives the next morning. Lix feels a slight sadness at parting with it, now that she has only just recovered it again, locating it amongst her things in her office that morning. The negatives of that particular roll are long since lost, but it is the only suitable thing she can think to give him. A peace offering, an olive branch, a hint that she can't bear his silence any more.

She's not sure what reaction she hopes to get. But at this rate, any reaction would be a start.

Lix steals out of the office quietly, feeling guilty as a thief.

\--

The Spanish days are hot and heady after that first night. Everything seems to run at double speed, with the days endless and fraught and the nights long and sleepless. He has entrapped her, entrammelled her, as Keats would say. He hadn't even done it intentionally. Lix knew that she had gone willingly to her fate, unable to resist a unique specimen such as Randall Brown, so unlike any man she had come across before. 

On one hand she wants to resent him, for twisting her heart in knots in a way that she thought would never happen for her, or at least not in a way that she would ever allow. She tries to fool herself that it is a fling, a dalliance, a temporary bout of madness - anything to keep her heart safe and away from harm. But it was too late: Randall had captured her, completely without guile or aim, but she had also let him. He was too useless at seduction to have done so intentionally, often awkward, odd and unsure but nevertheless eager to her call. 

She is a terrible cook, and he tidies her room when he thinks she isn't looking, folding clothes, and putting everything she owns into uniform lines. Late at night, he kisses down her bare spine (always an even number) and she traces patterns on his hipbone, pointed and sharp. She worries when she doesn't see him all day, when he comes back covered in dust and a look of resignation on his face. He is almost beside himself with anxiety when she turns up at his door with a cut on her forehead, blood dripping on her blouse after being caught in a riot, hit by flying debris. He tastes of whisky when he kisses her and she comes to crave it in his absence.

It is both perfect and terrible in a way that she never knew things could be before. Where once she would have railed for her independence, he lets her have it willingly, and takes what she will give. Lix finds, with him, she only wants to give. She wonders what has happened to the woman she used to think she was.

By day, they run through the streets, cameras poised, hunched in doorways, bodies close. They witness devastation and loss. They steal kisses under shop awnings and in alleyways. By night, indoors, they intwine, hot and sweet and mindlessly.

Perfect and terrible.

\--

The next day Lix waits for the repercussions of her bold actions, her sneak attack on his ordered regime, but it never comes. She expects to feel him hovering, lurking around every corner, but there is nothing: he is suspiciously absent. At the afternoon meeting he holds her gaze for slightly longer than usual, but he is gone five minutes later, and Lix's thoughts are drowned out by Freddie's shout of "a kingdom, oh a kingdom for a cup of tea!" (because if it doesn't have to be done quietly, Freddie is only too happy to oblige).

She waits. Nothing happens. She doesn't know what she expected.

\--

But then something does happen.

\--  
He can't stop touching her, kissing her. It has been months and although the Madrid night air is getting cooler, she still sits by her open window eager to catch any breeze that the horizon will offer. She smokes a cigarette and he sits on a chair behind her. He's reading - Sir Walter Scott, just to be patriotic - and his free hand strokes the back of her neck absent-mindedly, pausing only to turn over his page.

The silence seems loaded, but that is probably just in her mind. A fly buzzes against the window pane.

She has to tell him, but she doesn't know how - doesn't know what he'd say, how he'll react. Lix can't even bear to think what it will mean for them - for him, for her. She doesn't know what she wants to do, and she knows that is the first thing he'll ask.

She feels sick. She'd barely been able to get her breakfast down that morning, instead sticking mostly to her cup of tea and a couple of cigarettes. If he'd noticed, he hadn't said anything, because while Randall is observant, annoyingly so, he's also used to her being contrary on occasion, and will let her moods pass in silence if he can. Instead he only glances at her curiously over the table before proffering his lighter (tapping it twice on the battered tabletop first). Even though it's early, he waves at the barman to bring him a whisky.

Tomorrow. She'll tell him tomorrow. Yes, she promises herself, tomorrow will be best.

\--

It isn't tomorrow, or even the next day, or the next. Three weeks pass, and sometimes she feels fine, like nothing is different, and she can go on pretending that there isn't something ( _someone_ ) growing inside of her, a sliver of a beginning that is half him and half her. In her weaker moments, Lix can't deny that she is very curious about what the sum of that equation equals. In other moments she wants to tear at her skin, to rail against her body for betraying her like this.

She's sorting through her latest photographs in his room, tragedy upon more tragedy, anger and fear and sadness, when she finds herself crying silently, breathlessly. It is dark outside and she can hear a dog barking, shouts of people in the streets and laughter in the hall. But in looking at her photos, Lix can only see how horrible the world is and that somehow, despite all belief and reason, it seems she is going to be bringing a child into it. 

At that moment, she hears Randall outside the door and she tries to dry her eyes on the sleeves of the shirt of his that she's wearing . It smells of him and is too big on her, but it is a comfort, like having a piece of him close to her always. 

Randall is juggling his camera and three books, along with a newspaper under his arm. He looks bewildered and exasperated but when he sees her it takes him all of half a second to register her red-rimmed eyes, moist cheeks.

In another half a second, he has dropped everything onto the nearest table, and the fact that he doesn't immediately try and rearrange it into a more comforting formation means she knows she has caught his full attention. Even that fact makes her want to cry again.

And although Lix aches to fold herself into his arms, burrow herself away from the world, she also can't dare to let him touch her. She knows that if she lets him, there will be just more lies that she is sick of telling. The weight of her guilt is already so heavy that it is practically choking her.

Before he gets too close, she leaps out of her chair and backs away.

Randall stops in his tracks, hurt, and stares at her, frozen. "Lix?" He sounds so confused at her reaction. His face is so full of concern and worry and such love. She tries to hold on to that expression, lock it in her memory, before she changes everything between them.

A beat. An eternity, but not really.

"I'm... I'm... pregnant," she chokes, her hand, without thought, drifting to rest on her belly.

He's silent for a long moment, and as much as she tries to read the million expressions that dash over his features all at once, in truth she can barely see him through her tears.

"I'm engaged," he says, so quietly that she can hardly hear him. But its enough, oh, it's enough.

It doesn't go well after that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite everything, Randall Brown is a good man, and he deserves a life that Lix cannot give him. And while it hurts, both his lies and his absence, it is for the best, she thinks. He is too kind, too good, and she can't bear to keep him, only to have him come to resent her for what she will not compromise on.

One of Lix's great aunts dies, and so she takes the morning off to go the funeral. It is uncomfortable and strange and she can sense how people stare at her: the rebellious one, the black sheep of the family, like she had run away and joined the circus rather than just working in a newsroom. 

Lix doesn't regret it, following the story, following the news. She only wishes that she were young again so she could watch history unfold once more. She envies the youth of Bel and Freddie and Isaac, with time aplenty to still experience the world, but she can't deny that she also appreciates the wisdom that comes with age and experience.

The grey clouds over the city are swollen, but it doesn't rain. She disappears after giving her condolences to grieving relatives, not willing to submit herself to any further scrutiny. Her family never did quite understand her, but it is too late for all of that now and has been for many years. 

Back at Lime Grove, she lets herself into her office and can immediately sense he's been there, rearranging again. Clearly her absence was too much of an opportunity for Randall to resist. The chair isn't where she left it, and her ashtray has been moved to line up perfectly with her telephone.

But then she notices something tucked into the keys of her typewriter. Lix moves closer, simultaneously elated but wary of what she might find, what message he has left her. But it isn't a message, it is a photograph. Tit for tat, she assumes, as she plucks it out from its resting place to examine it closer.

It looks old, this photograph. It's old in the way that the corners have been rounded down, the paper soft and wrinkled like something that has been cherished, looked at frequently, carried around perhaps, hidden away in a book or wallet. 

It is a picture of the two of them, and the memory hits her square and hard in her chest so that she has to suck in a deep breath. Lix has never seen a photo of them both together before. Certainly, being photographers by nature, they had taken idle pictures of each other in quiet restful moments, but had never posed for any together.

But she remembers it now, vaguely, emerging from the cobwebs at the back of her mind. A French reporter, snap-happy and new on assignment, a night out in another dark back bar, whisky and music and the heat of Randall pressed up beside her. 

In the image they are sitting at a small table, just the two of them. They are tucked away in a corner, a tatty lamp beside them, casting a shadowy light. The tablecloth was red check, she remembers, although the photo renders it a dull patterned greyscale. There are two half-full glasses on the table, as well as Randall's silver cigarette lighter, a dented astray. 

They aren't facing the camera - in fact, it doesn't even look as if they are aware of it at all, these two young fools, Lix thinks. In this moment it is hard for her to equate what she sees in the picture as herself - a young woman with dark hair, head bowed and smiling, turning to her lover. They face each other, heads close, as if sharing a private joke: indeed, perhaps they had been. Randall's left hand rests on the top of the table, long fingers relaxed, outstretched. And although it can't be seen, Lix knows that his other hand would be resting on her knee, a touch to always connect them. Even now liquid heat pools in Lix's stomach, remembering.

He's without his glasses in this picture, and Lix notices how much softer, less sharp the angles of his face seem in comparison to what her memories had recently conjured. Perhaps that was just her mind trying to reconcile past him with present him, the same man but so very different in innumerable ways. Lix remembers that he always used to remove his glasses in the bars, something she found amusing, but he always shrugged off. The dim light made it hard enough to see anyway, he'd always said, so what difference did it make?

It's beautiful, she thinks, his gift to her, this crystallised memory. How long had he had it? Where did he get it? There are no clues on the back of the picture, no inky notations or handwritten scrawls. There is nothing but that moment frozen, a reminder of the folly and ecstasy of youth, of love, of blindness.

\--

He doesn't stop her as she flees his room, her photographs scooped up in haste, clasped against her chest. She drops some of them as she runs down the corridor, but she doesn't care - why would she care now?

Lix feels so foolish, so stupid, so small. She'd let herself been drawn in, let herself pretend and she was wrong to. Wrong to trust, to hope, and wrong to expect happiness on her own terms.

She locks herself in her tiny room, but even it taunts her with his presence. His books, a pair of discarded shoes, a spare razor in her bathroom. He's everywhere and nowhere and after several long minutes he is there again, knocking at her door.

She won't let him in. She _can't_. The fact of the matter is that although she is angry at him - wild, even - she is just as angry at herself. True, they never promised each other anything, and so she is not a jilted woman in that way. But he had _lied_ to her, even if it was only by the way of withholding the truth. Lix curls up on her bed, presses her fist to her mouth to muffle her sobs. She can't have the world ( _him_ ) knowing her pain. It is too hollow, too raw. 

His knocks are quiet at first, but grow progressively louder the longer she ignores him. Her door shakes with the impact of his fist, rattling on its hinges, but she won't face him or his pleas. Lix has nothing to say to him now.

Instead she lies there, and tries to imagine the future Mrs Randall Brown. Probably a petite Glaswegian girl, soft and honeyed, the complete opposite of the Amazonian Alexis Storm. This sweet woman waits patiently for her fearless fiancé, a brave man reporting from the front lines in Spain, never dreaming that for months he has betrayed her with another. Perhaps she reads his letters, hopeful for his return. In the meanwhile she keeps busy by planning their wedding and their future family. 

In truth, Lix has never dreamt of that life for herself, not in the way that most girls do. She never saw wedding dresses and china patterns. Her dreams were bigger and more expansive than keeping house for a man in a suit, watching him live in the outside world while she prepared his dinner every night. She didn't want that.

And yet. And _yet_.

In those quieter moments, if Lix was honest with herself, she had imagined that perhaps it might not have been like that with Randall. He understood her, had valued her as more than a trophy or trinket, had appreciated her mind as well as her body. But that had been her mistake, to imagine, to assume. As much as he may care for her, and Lix knew well enough that he did, the truth was that Lix was the secret that he needed to keep, not the other way around. He was the sort of man who needed something to nurture, needed someone to belong to. She wasn't sure she could be either of those things, weren't sure they were in her nature. Deep down, where she had buried it, pretending it didn't exist, Lix knew that she couldn't give him the family life that he so clearly needed, the one that had already arranged for himself. No, in spite of her predicament, Lix Storm was never going to excel in the role of life or mother. She could only disappoint him on that front.

The knocking had stopped. Lix cries herself to sleep.

\--

She tucks the photo he's given her into her purse, somewhere safe, somewhere close to her. Lix can't bear to part with it right now. It feels like some rediscovered part of herself, long forgotten, a talisman from which she draws her power. 

The show goes out in twenty minutes, and as Lix walks into the studio she arrives straight into the middle of an argument between Randall and Bel about the running order. Hector watches the spectacle from the wings.

Bel collars her before she can make herself scarce. 

"Mr Brown thinks the riots should be first, but I think the US deployment of Thor missiles is the better lead," Bel explains, the very picture of laying down the gauntlet. "He's wrong, of course," Bel continues, eyes widening at Lix as if to prompt her agreement.

Randall stands tall and raises a slightly stern but amused eyebrow, and waits quietly for Lix's response. His tie is a rich red. It reminds her of the chequered tablecloth.

Before she can even stop, Lix hears herself saying: "I'm afraid Mr Brown has this one, Bel my darling."

She doesn't stick around to catch the look on Bel's face, which she knows will be a combination of fury mixed with journalistic curiosity as to Lix's sudden and apparent defection to the executive camp. Lix can't help but laugh quietly as she hears Hector's low whistle of surprise following after her. Freddie is too busy scribbling copy in the corner, oblivious to it all.

Lix consoles herself about her minor betrayal of her producer. Professionally, she knows that Randall was right, after all. But of course, she also feels like she has also just added fuel to the slow-burning fire. In the end, she knows it will consume her.

\--

By dawn, Lix has a plan. 

Her small battered suitcase is packed, jammed tightly closed with those precious few belongings that she came with. She intends to leave on the afternoon train, all going well.

The stale air in her stuffy room is making her feel queasy. She needs to get out and walk, to use her remaining time to tie up loose ends. Leaving her suitcase for now, intending to pick it up later, she opens her door, and is shocked to see him there. He's sitting on the corridor floor, back propped against the wall, clearly waiting for her. To her relief, he's asleep.

Surprisingly he doesn't stir.

She studies his furrowed face. He looks exhausted, drained. His frame has contorted awkwardly in sleep, his glasses resting on the ground beside him. There is a half-empty bottle of whisky too, lying on its side. Judging by the state of him, he's clearly been there all night. 

Lix studies him for long moments, taking in his shallow breathing, the slight twitch of his fingers in sleep. She maps that figure that she knows so well, remembering the way he always kissed her, drew patterns on her naked skin, how the movement of his sinews felt under her touch. 

Lix realises that she will not see him again after this. This is the end of their story. She is closing the book.

Silently she walks away. She doesn't look back.

\--

He's gone by the time she gets back several hours later, no trace of his presence, a hollow shadow instead. It is like she has already erased him from her chronology, except nothing is ever that simple. Her hand ghosts over her stomach, a reminder.

Her train ticket is tucked in her bag. Northwards, towards home, but not home, not yet. The countryside is still volatile and she's not sure how far she'll get, but she'll figure it out as she goes.

"Miss Storm?"

She jumps, startled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," the voice says, a Yorkshire accent faintly detectable. The face attached to the voice is her neighbour, or as close as she could get to a neighbour, given the arrangements here. He has a kind round face, but she doesn't know his name. She's seen him around, here and there, but there was such a habit of faces coming and going that after a while Lix had eventually stopped keeping track.

She must look stuck, because he ploughs on anyway. "I don't mean to disturb you, Miss Storm, but a man stopped by here, asked me to give you something". He says this conspiratorially, as if perhaps thinking he is aiding in some great love affair. If only he knew the truth, she finds herself thinking bitterly.

He's offering her a small cardboard box, nothing special, nothing remarkable about it. She's half tempted to refuse it, knowing its true source. But Lix also doesn't want to be awkward and make a scene about it, so she takes it with a polite thank you. 

\--

Lix doesn't open the box. She can't bring herself to, not now, not yet. She knows that whatever is inside will not help her resolve to walk away.

Instead, she puts it in her suitcase and leaves for the station.

As the overcrowded train rolls out of Madrid Atocha, she swears she won't look back. 

It hurts all the same.

\--

Months go by and she is swollen and heavy when she finally gains the courage to look. Inside the innocuous cardboard box was a letter and a diamond ring in a modest black case.

_Stay with me_ , the letter had read in his beautiful cursive hand. _I would give up everything for you_.

He had always had a way with words, just like he had a way with her. It seems that Randall must have sensed that she would run. But anyway, it was too late now: Lix had resolved herself. Just as she would never have given up everything for him, she wouldn't ask him to do the same for her. She's not maternal, she senses. Lix keeps waiting for that part of her to emerge with time, to develop along with her size and increasingly frazzled hormones, but she only feels impatience and fraught concern. This place is no place for a child, just as her arms are no place for a baby.

Despite everything, Randall Brown is a good man, and he deserves a life that Lix cannot give him. And while it hurts, both his lies and his absence, it is for the best, she thinks. He is too kind, too good, and she can't bear to keep him, only to have him come to resent her for what she will not compromise on. 

This is what she tells herself, over and over. Lix hopes that the more she says it, the more it will feel like the truth.

\--

She writes to Randall care of the British embassy in Madrid to tell him about Sophia. He has a right to know, she thinks, that he is now a father and that the baby is safe and healthy. In all honesty, she feels it is an empty gesture. He could be a thousand miles away from Madrid for all she knows and he may never even get the news, might not even care, but she feels that in doing this, she has fulfilled any residual obligation that may still exist between them.

Nevertheless, Lix doesn't leave a forwarding address. 

She keeps the ring though. It is too valuable to send back, especially if he has moved on. Something in Lix hates the idea of it sitting gathering dust on an embassy shelf, never to be claimed.

Safe keeping, she tells herself. Safe keeping. She puts it on the chain she wears around her neck.

\--

She doesn't look back. Not for many years, not once Sophia had been given the chance of a true family life in France and Lix has forged a new path for herself back in London. It is a city where she can forget what she used to have and what she used to be. In London she is new and anonymous again.

There is another war, and she re-learns that the world is still terrible. The city rails and buckles, but it survives as it always has, through plagues and fires and now bombs. Randall is a distant memory, a butterfly captive in a jar with a dull fluttering of wings on the most unexpected of occasions. At least, that is what she pretends he is.

In the beds of other men, Lix finds some solace. It is temporary, but it is enough, and if they all resemble him in some way or another, she doesn't dwell on it. In her darker moments, with young men like Freddie in her bed, she tries not to think of the distant Mr and Mrs Brown, married with their own children. It consoles to her to think that at least he has that, someone who loves him, a family he deserves.

Lix learns that it was never him that was useless. It had been her all along.

\--

On the eve of her birthday, an envelope slips silently under her office door.

She finds it next the morning, half-bathed in the early sunlight beaming through the window. Picking it up and looking closer, she recognises his handwriting immediately, as striking and beautiful as ever. 

Inside there is a ticket to the theatre for the coming Saturday evening. A stall seat to a musical at Drury Lane. There is no note.

\--

On Saturday evening there is an unexpected rain shower. 

Two weeks ago, she'd left her umbrella in the back of taxi and hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. So to avoid the worst of the rain, she ducks and weaves her way through the cobbled Covent Garden marketplace, trying to dodge laughing young couples and the occasional over-excited tourist. Despite the wet, there is still a glisten of low sunshine behind the clouds, and it lends a fetching sheen to the pavement, a blinding silver. 

Lix hasn't been to the theatre for several months. She's been too busy, too tired, too everything. It is a welcome pleasure though, a thoughtful gift, one that Randall knows she will appreciate. 

But then as she rounds the street corner, she spots a familiar lean figure standing outside the theatre entrance. At first Lix is unsure, feels as if her eyes are deceiving her, like she has become the sort of person who imagines Randall Brown everywhere, slowly losing her mind. But no, it is definitely him, could only ever be him really, standing like that. He is poised and alert, ever watchful. Waiting. 

The unexpected shock of his presence literally stops her in her tracks as if she has run into an invisible wall. Her feet feel unable to move, like they are stuck in concrete, or in a fast-sinking mud. Her mind swims helplessly, unprepared. Is he waiting for her? Lix can only assume so, and then scolds herself because what else would he be doing here? Suddenly his easy deception, a simplistic plan all in all, becomes so blindingly clear. She feels foolish for how easily he has accomplished it, completely without suspicion.

Lix finds herself wishing she could be angry, but can't pin it down or hold on to it, not really. He's there, right there, no more than mere feet away. The sight of him feels like a thunderstorm after a drought, crackling with electricity and potential. It is a dialogue finally re-opening after months of near silence. A conversation that can resume. It is relief.

He hasn't seen her yet, but checks his watch anxiously, ever punctual. The old gesture makes Lix smile to herself, remembering his fine wrists, the particular way his bones used to feel under her hands. The shoulders of his coat are dappled by raindrops.

Suddenly self-conscious, she realises that it is too late to fix her rain-ruined hair. It is too late for anything now as it is just then he looks up and sees her. Lix feels ridiculous, standing there transfixed like some sort of statue. In response, he shuffles awkwardly on the spot, unsure how to acknowledge her arrival, clearly unable to tell yet whether she is pleased to see him or not. Lix watches as he adjusts his shirt cuffs, his tie, his glasses, in constant gestures of reassurance. His eyes follow her as she crosses the road. Lix stops in front of him as a nearby clock tolls seven.

He clears his throat, face serious, apprehensive.

"I wasn't sure you'd come if I'd invited you myself," he offers up reluctantly by way of explanation. Randall's voice is soft, accent curling at the edges, a particular melody that she never quite let herself forget. In her presence, it always seems like he is reduced to a young man, an embarrassed young boy. But she know now that she is not angry - how could she be? It was more than she could have hoped for, this big gesture that now promised to end the excruciating awkwardness between them. He fishes into the inside pocket of his coat and pulls out his own ticket. The seat next to hers, of course, she notes.

"I thought you didn't like musicals?" Lix says, trying to make sure it doesn't come across like an accusation, a judgment. The conversation feels too casual, but it also feels like a safe starting point, a calm ocean compared to the stormier seas they weathered months ago. That will need to be worked on, built up to, she knows. 

Her comment earns a quirk of a smile from him. It is fleeting, but Lix will take it. 

"We all make sacrifices," he replies.

They both pretend his words are not laden with other, deeper, meanings.

\--

She gets through it somehow, although his company proves more distracting than she initially thought it would. Somehow Lix feels reduced to the younger version of herself again, nervous and unsure: a fool holding her unprotected heart out in trusting open hands, like she has learnt nothing after all these years. 

She thinks of their poor little Sophia, long since gone from this world, the barest notion of a life lived. It seems unfathomable, even inconceivable to her, that they have outlived her. That the evidence of the physical tie between her and Randall no longer exists except in distant memories, a baby's scent, a soft tiny hand. 

He clings to it, perhaps, in a different way to her. Lix doesn't know his story, not those lost years between Madrid and Paris, and then back into her life at Lime Grove. He doesn't talk about what happened to his wife, now so very absent, if they ever had their own children. She can't ask. What right does she have to that information anyway if he is unwilling to offer it? She was the one who walked away so he could continue on with the life he had planned, the life she knew she couldn't give him.

But their link is more than that, and Lix knows well enough to admit this now. It isn't just the flesh and blood of the life they created together. Over time, she has recognised that they had never just been a series of lustful encounters pursued for mutual convenience. No, it had never been a shallow meandering thing, lacking in depth or desire. She may have tried to tell herself that at the time, even afterwards, but the reality was that it had been strong and potent, and could have been wonderful, perhaps, if things had been different. If they had been different people and wanted different things.

She thinks all of this as the curtain falls. Her hands are sore from clapping like an automaton, mindless and numb. He claps politely in the seat beside her, a picture of quiet dignity.

Lix waits outside while Randall collects their things from the cloakroom, her nervousness already bubbling rapidly to the surface again. Her hands shake as she lights a cigarette, takes an unsteady puff.

What now?

\--

In the end, they don't really say anything. He helps her with her coat, and hails her a passing taxi.

There is a long moment, fraught and strange, as he opens the cab door for her. She hovers awkwardly, trying to find the words, trying to decide what it is she wants (needs) to say. 

He opens his mouth, closes it again, looks intently at the ground.

Lix sighs. 

"Come on," she says finally, a resigned huff. She's tired of the silence, like a weight around their collective necks. There are so many questions and not enough answers. She won't let them start to slide backwards again.

At her words he glances up, eyes questioning. 

"Let's go," she adds for the avoidance of doubt, sliding inside the cab. She shuffles over to make room in the back. He bends his tall frame and gets in beside her.

As the taxi pulls away, he takes her hand, fingers interlinking. It is an old feeling, the way their palms feel pressed against each other, tenacious and desperate.

\--

He doesn't let go of her hand the whole journey. His grip is tight, verging on painful, but Lix doesn't have the heart to tell him. Lix won't have him pull away now, not when they are finally leaping into the unknown. His eyes remain fixed on the view out of the window, as if he's determined not to look at her. She does the same.

To the taxi driver, she thinks, they must look like an old married couple, comfortable in the silence, perhaps with nothing to talk about. But there is a tension in the air, heavy and red; it looms between them.

Randall still doesn't release her hand as they pull up in front of her flat, a neat terraced brick. By now it is dark and the street lamps are on. The neighbourhood cat is lounging on the front wall, eyes glowing.

"Nightcap then?" she says finally, daring to glance over at him. He's about to reply, but realising her mistake, she interrupts. "No, of course... not for you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"Coffee will be fine," he reassures her. 

\--

"If I'd have known I would be having company, I would have tidied up a bit," she apologises as she lets him in, switching on the lights. If Lix is honest, it isn't all that bad - she doesn't spend enough time here to make it that messy - but for Randall's exacting standards, she knows it will be enough to have his fingers twitching in no time at all. His habits seem to have gotten more particular with age, she's noticed, along with a few newer ones added to the old repertoire. If she's honest, they never really bothered in her the past. In Spain she'd just let him get on with whatever it was that particularly calmed him. But at the moment she's so conscious that the situation is uncomfortable as it is, and she doesn't want a pile of unopened mail on her coffee table to send him into overdrive.

"It's fine," Randall replies quickly, hasty to reassure her, but he's already adjusting a vase on her entrance table before he can help it. "Sorry," he says, snatching his hands away guiltily, and shoving them deep into his trouser pockets.

Lix shrugs, a gesture that is more non-committal than she actually feels about everything that is going on.

"I'll go make some coffee," she says instead. "You don't mind if I...?" She needs something stronger to fortify herself with.

Randall shakes his head and occupies himself removing his coat. She hears him then wander off into her front room. Lix busies herself in the kitchen, swallowing down a quick glass of whisky whilst making his coffee, glad that she had thought to stock up this morning. She feels so unlike herself, so sickly unnerved. She doesn't know what to expect, how this is going to go, or where to even start. 

It is eleven o'clock. 

\--

He tastes different now.

In Spain it had been the smooth richness of whisky, the smoky aftertaste of his unbranded cigarettes. 

Now he tastes like her sharp bitter coffee, unsweetened and black, a remnant of his time in Paris. He doesn't taste like cigarettes anymore: she's noticed he rarely smokes nowadays, an old habit replaced by many newer and odder ones, it seems. 

But even though he tastes different, he still kisses the same way. That familiarity gives her some strange sense of reassurance.

She had intended to talk to him, she truly had. But she hadn't known where to start or how to begin all that she needed to say. All her lofty intentions had drained away, leaving them with stilted conversation, a series of false starts, of inane small talk until she thought she was going to lose her mind. 

Perhaps it was the whisky that made her bold, but Lix knows that it has truly been many years since it had had that such effect on her anymore. No, it was him that really made her crazy and reckless.

So in the end, she had taken the only course of action that she felt left open to her. She had kissed him. Just once. On the mouth. 

At first he'd been startled, which was only natural she supposed, considering she had practically leapt on him with no warning at all. His shock is followed a long heavy pause, quiet but only for their breathing, which seems to her unbearably loud. He stares at her like an echo through time, of all those years ago on the threshold of her door. Another turning point, another moment in their history where everything changed.

And this time he still picks her. He picks her in her messy flat, his coffee growing colder on the table, but with her hands on the warm skin of his neck. They are older now, wiser she hopes, less prone to haste and mistakes and irrational behaviour.

When he moves and kisses her back, he still hums low in his throat as her fingertips graze the lobes of his ears, her palms pressing against the collar of his shirt. He cups her face in his hands, something he never used to do, using the gesture to pull her closer. Their knees touch on her uncomfortable sofa. Lix pulls away.

"I.. I don't know what's come over me," she says, trying to laugh it off, her fingers grazing her now warm lips. Her defences are already on the rise again, that instinctive urge to protect herself just in case she's somehow offended him and done the one thing she shouldn't have.

Randall reaches out for her hand, presses her fingers to his lips, head bowed, then chuckles softly. "I don't mind. I-" he shakes his head forcefully, as if trying to dislodge the word he is looking for. "I'm... relieved."

"Relieved?" 

"After... after the news... Sophia..." he trails off, each word sticking in his throat, "I thought that, that I had imposed on you long enough. I had forced myself back into your life, reopened old wounds, made you revisit some memories that obviously caused you... caused both of us... a great deal of pain." Randall releases her hands, takes off his glasses, and runs his hand over his tired eyes with a sigh.

"God, Lix. I felt so _guilty_ for putting you through that. For forcing you to go through that agony. _I_ brought that on you. You didn't ask for it. I thought that leaving you alone, letting you be, was the one thing I could do to alleviate my presence, make it more bearable for you. It was what you'd wanted from me when I arrived but I hadn't listened."

It is the longest speech she's heard from him in years, and Lix feels so blind for not seeing it clearly sooner. His withdrawal from her was his penance, his recompense to her. It was what he thought she wanted. He had initiated the search for their daughter, had known her reluctance, but had gone ahead anyway. He felt responsible for the news they had received, felt guilty that he had not allowed her to continue on in blissful ignorance. Her heart ached.

More than anything she wants to tell him that it had been the last thing she had wanted, that his silence has nearly crushed her. But it all feels too much to say and far too complicated at this point. Instead, she moves to slowly take his glasses out of his hands, folds them up and places them gently on the coffee table. She takes his hands again and pulls them into her lap.

"Tell me what happened to you after Madrid," she asks softly, her fear only masked by the thinnest veil of calm. 

Randall glances up at her, the plains of his face are part in shadow, leaving him looking gaunt, exhausted. Lix feels the waves of guilt rolling off him and is desperate to reassure him if she can. She squeezes his hands tightly and is pleased to feel his grasp hers in turn.

"Madrid?" he questions, matter-of-factly. If he is surprised by her request, he doesn't show it. Lix nods.

"I stayed," he admits. "Not very original, I suppose. But I was needed, I had to work, I had to _do_ something. I... I tried to find you, had contacts keeping an eye out for you all over Spain. I figured you'd pop up somewhere, that someone would recognise you, but you never did," he shakes his head sadly, regretfully. "I had hoped, but deep down I also knew you were too smart for that and that you didn't want to be found. When you didn't leave your address after letting me know about Sophia..."

Lix opens her mouth to respond, but finds she has no words. No more excuses to give.

"So I stayed until the end, then came back to London briefly. Eventually transferred to Paris. Was there during the Occupation - rather messy."

"And... your wife?"

"My wife?"

"Oh, Randall, don't be obtuse," Lix scowls, releasing his hands, finding herself suddenly furious. She makes a grab for her whisky glass, but he catches her hand before she can reach it . The way he touches her is still a newfound revelation.

"Lix," his voice is forceful, quietly powerful. She finally meets his eyes, still as sharp as they ever were. "I never got married, have never _been_ married."

"But... you were engaged, you said you were-"

"Engaged is not married," Randall answers shortly, releasing her hands now reassured that she isn't going to fly off the handle at him. He retrieves his glasses from the coffee table and puts them back on. Taps the frames twice.

"What happened?" she asks quietly. Lix feels like she is on the edge of a cliff, peering down.

"I couldn't go through with it. Couldn't marry someone I didn't love," he says pointedly, seriously. "I broke it off with her, hopeful that I'd find you, that things could be fixed..." he breaks off, the rest of the story unnecessary now.

"So you've never... you've never...?" Her voice is lost amongst what she can now feel to be hot tears. Lix is frustrated at her sudden loss of poise. But it is too much, this news. 

He reaches out, wipes the tears from her cheeks with his thumb. The gesture is gentle and kind. She scrubs her face furiously with the back of her hand, embarrassed.

"I'm an acquired taste," he teases, trying to make her smile, but failing miserably. "I... I told you once, I would give up everything for you."

"It seems you did," Lix replies sadly, a whisper.

He smiles slowly, a hint of melancholy, but says nothing.

She chokes out a bitter laugh, the weight of everything too much to bear. But there is a relief there, a calming bliss of knowing that there are no secrets left anymore. Her hand goes up to the chain around her neck, to the ring sitting in the hollow of her throat. His eyes follow.

"Let's go to bed," she says.

He nods.

\--

This part is different from before. Not bad different, she thinks, just different different. It was bound to be.

In their youth it had been about heady passion, an urgent desperation to undress each other, to fall into bed. Now, it seemed it was to be quieter, more controlled - the years had made them wiser, more contained. This time it was about companionship and a rediscovery of everything that had been lost. Navigating a way so that they could cling onto their shattered remains.

They stand on opposite sides of her bed, undressing separately: slowly, carefully. He folds every item of clothing that he removes and places it on a nearby chair. She folds her clothes too, not her usual style, but more out of the need to soothe him rather than anything else. Lix can tell well enough that this isn't easy for him. Everything in in her room is probably out of sync with how he likes things, so if there is even a little thing that she can do to calm his busy mind, she will do it. Gratefully, she notices that there is still a flare of lust in his eyes as she unbuttons her blouse, so maybe not everything has changed. Nevertheless they savour this time, don't rush, now understanding how easily hasty things can slip through careless fingers and be lost.

Once she is only in her slip and he in his undershirt and boxers, they slide into the cool sheets and face each other. There is still apprehension there, even after everything, and it takes her a moment before she gives into everything and curls her body around him, pressing her face into the crook of his neck. His arms wrap instinctively around her, warm, possessive. It is like Spain again, being back in his embrace. Randall still smells the same, feels the same against her, even though age has passed by them both and left its mark. Lix knows her body has changed - she is softer, less sharp, there are stretch marks on her stomach, now silvery and faded with time. Randall kisses her forehead tenderly, a hand coming to rest on her upper arm, ever respectful. 

But Lix doesn't want respectful, not really. She can pretend at coy, try and seduce him shyly, but the closer she gets to him, the more her blood boils and sets her on fire.

In the end she knows that she cannot pretend that his comfort and his presence in her bed is all that she needs. No, she wants more than that, has always wanted more than that from him, even now. His hair may be greyer, face more lined, but she can still see him for the young man he was, odd and elusive, dignified and kind. The one she had never quite forgotten, never quite gotten over.

She works her hands under his shirt, pressing the flesh that she finds there. Randall releases a sharp puff in reaction to her cool hands, glancing down at her tucked up beside him.

"You kept it," he murmurs, voice heavy in the dim light. She doesn't need to ask what he is referring to. His hand drifts to the chain around her neck, the ring. 

"Of course," Lix whispers, hushed. 

With the back of his fingers, he strokes the skin of her neck, the visible swell of her breasts. His touch is so soft, so fleeting that it barely registers, but she knows it enough for her heartbeat to increase, to want him closer. He is still so useless at seduction, far too timid and too afraid to offend her. But she is the opposite and still has some tricks up her sleeve.

"Why didn't you go back to Paris?" she asks, her hand moving to trace slow circles on the curve of his hipbone. Lix feels him shudder against her, the old familiar sensations seeping back, long suppressed. He always used to squirm under her caresses. That hasn't changed either.

"When?"

"After we... we found out about Sophia." That day in his office, the agony of fresh loss.

Randall sighs, his mouth pressed against her hairline, his breath warm against her skin. "I thought about it. It was an option."

"So why didn't you?"

He pulls away from her, finally looking her in the eye. "Why do you think? I still had hope like a sentimental old fool."

Lix's mouth curls up into a smile, tilts her face up towards his. "I'm glad you stayed," she says, pressing her cold feet against his legs, trying to warm them. He squirms some more, and she laughs.

"Oh yes?" he responds, his voice low, scarcely louder than a whisper. 

Lix nods, her mouth now inches away, noses almost touching. "Yes, darling," she says, before she kisses him. "Very much."

\--

He is still Randall, and it had always been him in the end, even when she tried to pretend it wasn't. He had always been her pinnacle, the one against which all others were measured. He isn't the same but she supposes she isn't either, too much time has passed, too many scars left on them both. He's become more reserved, more lost in himself. She's become even more reckless, more wild, less concerned with others opinions of her. They shouldn't work on paper, but she's quickly learning that they still do, very much.

His kisses are tentative at first, not nearly enough of what she wants from him. Him, ever the gentlemen. In the end she opens her mouth, pressing her case, moans her approval when he responds in kind. Randall takes her hint, accepts her encouragement, and threads his hands through her hair, rough and strong and the sensation it causes reverberates all the way down her body. Her gasps seem to awaken something in him, like long lost memories, of twenty years ago in tiny Spanish rooms, the air hot and humid.

So much for languid and calm she thinks, as he reaches for the hem of her slip, pulling it upwards. Lix helps him eagerly, feels proud at the way he looks at her, the way her body still renders him lost and helpless. 

"Oh, you are _glorious_ ," he murmurs as she lies there, languishing on her back, revelling in the way she can tell he needs her more than anything else in this moment. His mouth presses hot against her skin, plucks against her nipples, and she can't contain a choke of pleasure. 

He remembers how to touch her like it had only been yesterday. He's always had a good memory, and Lix has never been more grateful for it. She's desperate to feel him and so when he finally peels off her last layers of clothing, and kisses softly between her thighs, she is about ready to scream. She can tell he is trying to tease her, but it is clear that his self-restraint is waning. There is nothing she wants more than for him to be inside of her, but when he eases two fingers into her instead, and then joining in with his clever tongue, Lix finds she is more than happy to accept the alternative.

Oh, he is still so good at this, and it takes everything she has to not grind down hard against him. Instead she arches, angling, and he renews his efforts, remembering what she likes, how to twist against her, that small spot that makes her come undone.

She is in half agony by the time he lets her fall off the edge, into the abyss. Her body is slick with sweat, and she is embarrassingly out of breath. He looks at her like he's barely started, smug and content, and Lix almost laughs at how they are acting like sex-crazed young things, still capable of driving each other to distraction. 

But she doesn't let him maintain his power for long. She is quick to force him on his back, removing his shirt, his boxers. She discards the items on the floor, and is pleased when he doesn't even notice, so intently is he watching her.

It is a relief when she takes him inside of her, the way he chokes out her name, grits his teeth. She knows she is slick and ready, and so moves slowly, determined to torture him as much as possible. It doesn't take long before his hands are reaching for her, demanding her closer. He sits up, pulls her against him, just like that first time in Spain, so many years ago. Lix rocks against him, her hips instinctive and punishing. 

"Alexis," he manages, ragged and coming apart. He's the only one that she's never minded calling her that and in the past he has only ever done it like this, when he was falling to pieces around her. The way he still elongates the third syllable sends a jolt down her spine, and she arches fiercely against him.

This was not what she expected, not what she thought they could still be after all this time. But there is something in him that she seems to be capable in unlocking somehow. It makes feel her powerful, to be able to whittle down this man's reserve until he is languid and mindless around her, only to build him up again, start from scratch. Lix can tell that Randall hadn't expected this either, although she's unsure why they are both surprised. They may be older, more bruised and battered by life, but they still feel hunger and desire, still clearly feel it for each other.

She comes a second time as he spills inside her. The force of his fingers on her hips will leave bruises in the morning, but she wants nothing more than to have been marked by him, scored by his touch. Lix wants to say to him that she'll let him keep doing this with her forever, every night for the rest of their damn lives if he'll have her. But even after everything, her tongue is tied, and her heart is racing. Nevertheless she feels a contentedness flow through her bones that she had never thought she would feel again as they curl together, skin stickily sweet. 

"Good night, darling," Lix murmurs, stroking his face languidly. There is already a graze of stubble there, rasping against her skin.

"I would still do anything for you," Randall responds quietly, his voice heavy with relaxation and sleep. His eyes are already closed. He kisses the palm of her hand, pulls her closer.

"I know, darling," she says, tracing the shadows under his eyes with her fingers, his furrowed brow. "Me too."

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments. They do all mean a lot.
> 
> Prompts are also welcome for future fics. I've hit a bit of a wall at the moment.


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